Syndet & shampoo bars
Surfactants are sold as solutions, not neat. Twenty grams of a 30 % betaine is six grams of surfactant and fourteen of water, and every shampoo-bar recipe online is written in raw-material weights that leave that conversion to you. This does it, both ways round.
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The active matter, by charge
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Cost this batchIngredient list
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Canada takes the EU name for water, honey, milk, tallow, beeswax and the other ingredients in its Schedule, or the English name with the French beside it. This list uses the EU names.
How to read this
A name you typed is listed as you typed it, so type each ingredient’s INCI name, from its supplier’s documents. Water and fragrance are written the way the chosen market writes them.
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Business prepares this recipe’s safety dossier for your assessor: Part A of the product information file, in Annex I’s ten sections, with the composition worked out from what you weigh. The assessment itself stays the assessor’s.
Product information file · Part A information
1Quantitative and qualitative composition
| Raw material | INCI | % w/w |
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The composition is free: save the recipe and the dossier page shows section 1 in full, with CAS and EC numbers. The other nine sections, printing and the PDF are Business.
- Physical/chemical characteristics and stability
- Microbiological quality
- Impurities, traces, information about the packaging material
- Normal and reasonably foreseeable use
- Exposure to the cosmetic product
- Exposure to the substances
- Toxicological profile of the substances
- Undesirable effects and serious undesirable effects
- Information on the cosmetic product
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Calculated at soapformulator.com, every value sourced. Check the figures against your own scale.
The formula, and where it comes from
activeᵢ = massᵢ × active %ᵢ ÷ 100 actives % = Σ activeᵢ ÷ total × 100 ratio = Σ anionic actives ÷ Σ amphoteric actives # by active, not by weight water = Σ(massᵢ × water %ᵢ ÷ 100)
- Active matter is the mass fraction of a raw material that is surfactant, as stated on the supplier’s technical data sheet. Active mass = raw-material mass × active % ÷ 100; the blend’s active matter is the sum of those over the total mass. — The active percentage belongs to a specific grade from a specific supplier. The same chemical is sold at several strengths, so the figure must come from the data sheet for the material actually used.
- Anionic and cationic surfactants carry opposite charges and associate into a neutral complex of low water solubility. Depending on the ratio this precipitates, thickens, or is used deliberately as the coacervate that deposits conditioning polymer on hair. — Whether the interaction is a fault or the point depends on the materials and the ratio. A cationic conditioning surfactant in an anionic shampoo bar reduces foam and can leave the bar grainy; a cationic polymer at low level is how conditioning shampoos work.
- Water carried into the batch by liquid surfactants and other ingredients, from each raw material’s stated water content: water = Σ(massᵢ × waterᵢ % ÷ 100). — A liquid surfactant’s non-active fraction is mostly but not entirely water; salt and preservative make up the rest. Use the data sheet’s water figure where it gives one.
Why there is no mildness score
The measurements of mildness that exist — the zein test, the collagen swelling test, patch testing — are laboratory tests on a finished product. Nobody has published a model that turns a blend’s composition into one, so any score here would be invented. The charge split is real, and it is what those tests mostly track: amphoterics and non-ionics soften an anionic blend.
Water in a bar that has to set
Liquid surfactants carry most of their weight as water. A shampoo bar with a generous pour of betaine can end up with more water in it than the maker ever added on purpose, and it stays soft or sweats. The water figure here counts every raw material whose water content you give, and says when it is a floor because you left one out.
Common questions
Where do I find the active percentage?
What anionic to amphoteric ratio should I aim for?
Can I put a conditioner in a shampoo bar?
What is the fragrance limit for a shampoo bar?
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